A Huge Challenge

Mahatma Gandhi, the mid-20th century non-violent Indian nationalist and philosopher, who famously led the Indian nation out of the British Empire, once wrote, "To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of truth face to face, one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself. And a man who aspires after that cannot afford to keep out of any field of life."

In other words, it's not good enough to stand at the sidelines of life and spout platitudes about goodness, mercy etc. It is necessary to engage with everything around us, on a deeply compassionate and empathic level, regardless of its / their station and circumstance. Gandhi was famous for engaging with people of the Dalit caste, those who were considered to be "untouchable" by members of higher castes.

But oh my goodness! It is a huge challenge. I am sitting here in my nice warm house, working on my laptop (because I can afford to use as much electricity as I need to) and generally living a life of privilege. I have written about my uneasiness about it before, and am only too aware that as a well-off, White, heterosexual woman, I have a head start on so many others, simply through accidents of birth, and good fortune.

Yet Gandhi is not talking only about having compassion and empathy for other human beings, vitally necessary though that is. He speaks of loving "the meanest of creation" as oneself. If we follow that to its logical end, we should all be vegans, climate change and social justice activists, and committed to non-violence, and to alleviating the circumstances of anyone worse off than ourselves.

And I fear that it too hard for most of us. It is too hard for me. Then I remember that I am in the privileged position of being able to choose whether or not to engage with this stuff. And feel guilty all over again. 

Yet I believe that the attempt to live in this way should at least be made, if we are to save this planet and the people and living creatures on it. If we are to fight for justice and equity for all living beings. Words are easy to say and write, but translating those words into concrete and effective actions is hard. Perhaps the least any of us should do is what we can, where we are. And be aware of what we are running away from facing, if we choose to turn our backs on making the effort, being our best selves.

Like I said, it's a huge challenge...

Embracing Equality

I have been watching the new BBC3 series Queer Britain with fascination. I have many LGBT friends, who are just that - my friends - simply because I like them as unique individuals.

But the topics which each of the programmes have covered - faith, body image, homelessness, and ethnicity, have never been so clearly defined for me within the LGBT context. So I have learned much, and have new insights about what it means to be an LGBT person in the UK today.

Some of the stories have been heartbreaking - it seems that discrimination in all its nasty forms is alive and well, not only among heterosexuals, but also within the LGBT community. The issues of body image and race have great potency - one black lesbian woman commented sadly on the latest programme: "I feel like a triple minority - black, lesbian, and female."

And I thought: "Sh*t! She's right - I get that." Because as a straight, white woman, I am only too aware that I shelter behind two bastions of often unconscious privilege, but can understand from the inside what discrimination against women looks like. And can understand what having body image issues feels like, although I had not formerly appreciated their particular significance for many LGBT folk.

Ultimately this is all about judging people by how they identify themselves or how we identify them - by what they look like, how they dress, the colour of their skin, their age, and their sexual orientation. Whenever we judge people by what they *are*, rather than for their behaviour, we are guilty of being non-inclusive, on the grounds of gender, sexual orientation, skin colour, age, size and [dis]ability, to name the most common nasty behaviours. Which seem to be all to prevalent in UK society today, no matter what we look like or whom we are attracted to.

Why do we do this to ourselves, to each other? We are all human beings, each one unique, each one worthy of love and justice and respect, each one with unique gifts to offer. As my friend Yvonne remarked when I shared this post with her: "everyone is an unique combination of beauty and diversity, and we should celebrate that. And each form of oppression of that beauty and diversity is different, with its own distinct history which is different in different places, which is why we need feminism, and LGBT liberation, and Black liberation, and the disability rights campaign, ... rather than a single munged-together "human" campaign."

We need to be aware of ourselves and each other as "unique combinations of beauty and diversity" and to respect and appreciate the struggles that each of us goes through to be recognised as such.

Digital by Default

Sometimes, on very rare occasions, a book or film comes out that is so important, it becomes a personal signpost in your life. Time divides into "before" and "after", and life is never the same again, because your eyes have been opened, and there is no alternative but to respond, to change, to act.

I can think of two straightaway, in my own past - Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth,  which opened my eyes to the futility of war, and the necessity of working for peace; and the film Cry Freedom, about the life of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, who died in police custody.  Others include Quentin Crisp's The Naked Civil Servant, so memorably brought to life in a factional film by John Hurt; Pride,  about a group of young homosexuals who came to the aid of a village of Welsh miners; and the graphically violent Twelve Years A Slave, which portrayed the horrors of slavery in the US. Although for me, it was the book Noughts and Crosses, by British author Malorie Blackman, which really woke my conscience to the issue of white privilege.

All these books and films have one thing in common: they show the viewer / reader very clearly what it is like to be on the losing side of the System. Tonight I can add another to that list. I went to see the award-winning Ken Loach film I, Daniel Blake with a friend, and it affected us both profoundly.

To sum it up in a phrase, it is a tale of the dispossessed, based on a true story about two real people, who fell through the cracks in the pavement of "normal" society, and about the unthinking, unfeeling prejudice they encounter. It is about the inflexibility of the welfare system at its bureaucratic worst, in which jobs-worth employees of the Department of Work and Pensions and its associated companies blindly stick to the rules in their dealing with their "clients", denying their common humanity. Valid reasons for not complying with the many and varied regulations are dismissed as excuses, and no leeway is given, no mercy involved.

[PLOT SPOILERS] In the case of the title character, Daniel Blake, a seriously ill widower and trained carpenter of long experience, is recovering from a major heart attack, but officials refuse to listen to his clear explanations that his doctor and consultant have both told him that he is unfit to work, and insist that he applies for Job Seekers' Allowance. Which involves completing online forms, producing a digital CV, and other pleasant impossibilities, which Blake, who is computer-illiterate, like many of the older dispossessed, is simply unable to do, although he tries and tries.

And because they deem that he is "fit for work", he has to prove that he is actively searching for it. He hawks his CV round the streets and working sites of Newcastle, walking miles a day to do so, but is unable to provide digital "proof" of having done so, and so is sanctioned (denied any benefits at all) for four weeks. He is warned that the next time this happens, it will be 13 weeks.

One particular DWP employee is portrayed as sympathetic, and tries to help him (for which she is severely admonished by her superior), but the rest just stick to the letter of the law, and refuse to listen to him. He is told by one pompous official "We are digital by default", to which he retorts brilliantly, "Well, I'm pencil by default!".

Eventually, after having to sell virtually all his possessions to stay alive, he finally gets to an appeal to be allowed to claim Sickness Benefit, but succumbs to a second, and this time fatal, heart attack just before it.

The other main character, Katie, is a young single mother from London, who has spent the previous two years living in a one-room hostel with her two young children, before being offered a flat, hundreds of miles away from friends and family, in Newcastle. Her story is similarly heart-breaking.

One of the most gut-wrenching scenes in the film comes at a visit to a food bank. Katie, who has been denying herself food to stop her children from going hungry, is given a tin of baked beans with one of those snap tops. She loses control, goes into a corner, tears open the tin, and begins to scoop the cold baked beans into her mouth, avidly, desperately, Dan and the food bank volunteer are both moved and horrified, as she apologises: " I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I was just so hungry." Both my friend and I were in tears at this point (and many others) as were the people around us.

Katie is eventually forced to turn to prostitution in order to pay for food and clothing for her children. She hates what she is doing, but feels she has no choice.

We came out at the end of the film feeling helpless and angry. What sort of crappy society is it that we live in, where people are treated without kindness, without compassion, where obeying the system matters above all, and where breaking any of the System's rules has dire consequences?

The only rays of hope that we could find were in the ordinary human-kindness of neighbours and friends, and of Dan and Katie towards each other. The mercy shown by the store manager when Katie was caught shop-lifting; the concern of Dan's young neighbour; the various folk in the library who tried to help him on the computer. These stand out as beacons of hope in a cruel world.

I, Daniel Blake has left me feeling angry and helpless, but filled with a desire to *do* something to stop this crap from happening to people in my country, right now.